News

Here’s an Army booster production that got way out of hand: it’s a semi-docu using real soldiers, and filmed in Korea near the real combat zones – and filmed in full-scale 3-D. The soldiers, the equipment, everything is real — even the ammunition used is live, not blanks.

The Walking Dead's Season Eight premiere last week was undoubtedly action-packed; in retrospect, however, you can see how most of the hour was about the bluster before the battle. All the fireworks happened in the last third – and even that was just the opening salvo for what could be weeks of warfare. It's in this week's episode – "The Damned" – where the conflict really ramps up, on multiple fronts. And by the closing credits, there's no sign of any peace treaties getting drawn up any time soon.

Samuel Fuller sure knows how to turn up the geopolitical tension, especially in a rip-roaring provocative atom threat adventure, that might have caused problems if anybody cared what movies said back when the Cold War was hot. Richard Widmark skippers a leaky sub to the arctic and discovers that the Chinese communists are going to start WW3 — and blame it on Uncle Sam. It’s an insane comic-book adventure about very serious issues — and we love it.

Actress Lucie Lucas, director Gabe Klinger, and actor Anton YelchinYou may already know the work of Brazilian-born American Gabe Klinger, perhaps through his writing as a critic for Cinema Scope and Sight & Sound, or through his programming at such venues as the Museum of Modern Art and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. In 2013, Klinger leapt behind the camera for his delightfully idiosyncratic debut film, Double Play, a documentary twofer chatting with and exploring the work of two distinctively different yet unexpectedly compatible American filmmakers, Richard Linklater and James Benning. This move to documenting (and combining) favorite filmmakers seemed like a natural extension of Klinger's advocacy in print and work at cinematheques and film festivals. Yet rather than remaining in the documentary mode, for his follow-up Klinger has gone overseas to Portugal to make a cleverly time-addled romance that's at once elated and melancholy. Porto, taking place in a dreamy, remembered

Memorial Day is that time Americans set aside each year to remember and honor the sacrifices of our fallen military veterans. But it's also a day off from work, and for those who want to spend the day in front of their TV without feeling unpatriotic or ungrateful — relax, we've got you've covered. We've scoured the streaming services and digital rental outlets, and we've found nine movies (and one mini-series) that'll fill your entire holiday with thoughtful, provocative, appropriate entertainment. By the time you're done, our nation's fighting forces may

Released in 1952, Fixed Bayonets! marked the first studio picture directed by Samuel Fuller, and his second in a row that would depict the still-in-progress Korean War. After the surprise success of the independently produced The Steel Helmet, Fuller met with all the major studio heads - Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer et al - all of whom were eager for him to repeat his success on a modest budget. Only Darryl Zanuck asked Fuller about the stories he wanted to tell and pledged to use box office profits to finance better movies in the future. Fuller, a former newsman and screenwriter, had found his new home, and signed on to make six pictures with the studio. What he didn’t want to do, however,...

March 22nd’s Blu-ray and DVD releases are an eclectic bunch, featuring a handful of cult classics, a thriller with the likes of Val Kilmer and Michael Madsen, Goth Katie Holmes fighting against the oppressive nature of her educational system, cowboys taking on prehistoric creatures, and a special edition of Fear the Walking Dead’s inaugural season. Yes, there’s truly something for almost every genre fan.

Known primarily for his war films and crime dramas, American director Samuel Fuller also directed a quartet of westerns, the last of which being 1957's Forty Guns. The film was part of a deal struck with 20th Century Fox after the success of Fuller's breakout film, about the Korean War, The Steel Helmet. Wooed by the studio's dedication to making "better movies" rather than lining their own pockets, Fuller signed a seven-picture deal. Forty Guns is loosely based on Wyatt Earp and the iconic "gunfight at the O.K. Corral", which went down in Tombstone, Arizona in October 1881. Here, the Earp surrogate is Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan), who rides into town with his two younger brothers, Wes (Gene Barry) and Chico (Robert Dix), with a warrant...

There are horrors-of-war movies (“Come and See”), and then there are World War II horror movies (“Dead Snow”), and judging by “Fires on the Plain,” it’s not entirely clear whether Japanese splatter director Shinya Tsukamoto understands the difference. The “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” helmer claims to have long dreamed of filming Shohei Ooka’s 1951 novel, already adapted far more artfully by Kon Ichikawa, but . Despite the credibility a Venice competition slot imparts, “Fires” feels more giallo than arthouse.

Reminiscent of the stretch where Teuton hack Uwe Boll tried to earn back some respect by directing pics about Auschwitz and Darfur, Tsukamoto’s passion project represents an earnest attempt to make a statement, held back by some of the B-movie helmer’s own worst instincts. Serving as both lead actor and his own d.p. (alongside Satoshi Hayashi), Tsukamoto shoots mostly handheld in a spastic, jump-cut style, seldom lingering long enough for us to absorb,

If you're not old enough to remember, this (along with "Gremlins" and "Poltergeist") was the movie that prompted the creation of the PG-13 rating, after parents complained that a PG-rating wasn't adequate for a movie that includes a scene where a man's still-beating heart is ripped out of his chest.

But did you know that an Oscar-winning Hollywood legend almost had a small role in the film? Or what stars pranked Harrison Ford on the set? Didn't think so.

One of Hollywood's true maverick filmmakers, Sam Fuller was never a man to shy away from tackling important social and political issues in his films. Famously, he was the first American filmmaker to tackle the Korean War, in The Steel Helmet, mental illness (among other issues) in Shock Corridor, and child abuse in The Naked Kiss. So when Paramount executives Jon Davison and Don Simpson were scrambling to get a bunch of projects through production ahead of an upcoming writers' strike in 1981, who better to take on the long-gestating White Dog than Fuller, hot again after the recent success of The Big Red One.White Dog is adapted from an autobiographical novel written by Romain Gray, which told the story of how he and his...

Our astute managing editor, Erik Davis, spotted another great find at Tumblr fave Cinephilia and Beyond. Shannon Davis' 2006 documentary Edge of Outside is an hour-long, in-depth look at the history of independent cinema, celebrating the genre's hallmark directors: John Cassavetes, Peter Bogdanovich, Roger Corman and more. Davis interviewed Hollywood heavy hitters like Martin Scorsese, who shares great stories about filmmakers like Sam Fuller. The Steel Helmet director made pictures at major studios like Fox and Columbia that didn't look like studio films and had a "pure, singular way of seeing the world." Scorsese also explains that the spirit of indie filmmaking was alive in Hollywood during the 1920s and was nurtured by the system for a time...

Few writer-directors in the history of American cinema fit the definition of “maverick” better than the late Samuel Fuller. Brash and bold, he used his experiences as a newsboy, reporter, and infantryman to inform his best movies, from Park Row and The Steel Helmet to The Big Red One. If you admire his films and haven’t read his autobiography, A Third Face, you have a real treat in store. Fuller’s daughter Samantha has set out to make a documentary about her father to commemorate his 100th birthday this year, making use of material that hasn’t been mined in the existing docs that cover his colorful life and career. Like so many filmmakers (and...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Trevor Hogg profiles the career of legendary filmmaker George Lucas in the third of a six-part feature... read parts one and two.

“We both have a tradition that, when we have a film opening for which there are high expectations, we get out of town,” stated filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who vacationed with colleague George Lucas in Hawaii while Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Star Wars (1977) were being theatrically released. Lucas asked Spielberg what he would like to do as his follow-up effort. “I said I wanted to do a James Bond film. United Artists had approached me after Sugarland Express [1974] and asked me to do a film for them. I said, ‘Sure give me the next James Bond film.’ But they said they couldn’t do that. Then George said he had a film that was even better than a James Bond. It was called Raiders of the Lost Ark

War is a nation’s ultimate commitment of blood and treasure. As such, the stories a people tells about its wars – and don’t tell – and the ways it remembers its wars – or chooses to forget them – tells us much about the kind of people they consider themselves to be at different times in their history, as well as the kind of people they really were…and are.

For most of the 20th century, the war film was a Hollywood staple. From one era to the next, war movies documented the nation’s conflicts, reflected the national consciousness on particular combats as well as on thinking going far beyond any one, particular war. They’ve been propagandistic and revisionist,

The film, by a director with whom I have no familiarity, was quite a discovery: a dark, morose, low-budget Western (and crypto Korean War film) that stars Gregory Peck as a "valiant" cavalry officer who leads a ragtag group of miscreant soldiers and non-coms on a suicide mission to defend a strategic pass from the Apache. The story and atmosphere is absolutely post-WW2; there's both a nastiness of the soldiers (anticipating films by Robert Aldrich, including the somewhat similar The Dirty Dozen) which reflects the more cynical attitude towards war and violence of the era, as well as an abstraction to the cause and ideology of

I watched six movies this week, but of the bunch I'm only going to tell you about one here. One of them was Criterion's Blu-ray of Broadcast News, which I've already started working on my review, I also watched Cedar Rapids and The Eagle, but they don't come out for a few weeks so I'll be reviewing those at that point. I also saw The Mechanic and The Rite, but you already have my opinion of those two. So that leaves me with just one...

Well, I'm down to only needing to see Wings (the first Best Picture Oscar winner) and Cavalcade (the 1934 Best Picture Oscar winner) and I will have seen them all. Next up, watching all of the Best Picture nominees... a task that is certain to take me even longer.

For any of you that may be interested in watching all of the Best Picture Oscar winners next month on Turner Classic Movies you will be able to knock a Ton of them out in only one month as they have their 31 Days of Oscar marathon. I know it's where I will be seeing several I haven't seen including the two I mentioned above, both of which aren't available on DVD. Wings shows on February 6 and Cavalcade shows on February 9. Just thought I'd let you know.

I have had my introduction to the films of Samuel Fuller... and I want more. However, the wanting I'm experiencing has little to do with the films on Criterion's two recently released Blu-rays for Fuller's Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss as much as it has to do with the selection of special features available on these two discs. Limited as they may be, the selection of interviews, short films and documentaries available across these two discs paint the picture of an artist of a bygone era. As director Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas) says in one of them (from a 1983 interview), "The B-picture is finished. For ten, fifteen years already. It doesn't exist anymore, and Sam's whole work was inside that genre. Sam never made a film that took more than four weeks to shoot and cost more than a million-and-a-half."

IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.